Zahn says… On his Facebook page, Tim Zahn narrows the timeline of his upcoming Han Solo novel from OT era to “around the time of” A New Hope, brainstorms a theory on why Chiss are hanging around The Old Republic, and reveals possible topics for the short stories that would have gone with the probably-not-happening annotated editions of Dark Force Rising and The Last Command. (Two of these originally brought to my attention by Roqoo Depot, since I haven’t been paying as much attention to Facebook as I should.)
Excerpts. With James Luceno’s Darth Plagueis coming out on Tuesday, the machine was in full swing this week, with a mini-excerpt on Facebook, two pages on Entertainment Weekly and the first 50 pages on Suvudu. Is there anything in the book that hasn’t been released as a tease at this point?
Well, this is disturbing. If you’re a Sith in The Old Republic, you get your own Twi’lek slave to torture. Yeeeeah, no thanks.
Short stories. Eric Geller daydreams up some short story anthologies. (Remember anthologies? We haven’t seen one since ’99. They didn’t sell at that well, apparently.)
Chat. Dark Horse and John Jackson Miller will have a Twitter chat on Tuesday for the occasion of Knights of the Old Republic: War #1, which will apparently be coming out on Wednesday. You’ll want to keep an eye on the hashtag #KOTORWarChat.
That slavery/torture aspect of TOR really is disturbing.
I’d love to see more anthologies. Those were fun.
Cy: Indeed – i’m wondering how integral that part of the gameplay is to the overall plot of that character class – and what the consequences of it are.
Nancy: i love those anthologies, too. The Mos Eisley Tales is one of my favorite SW books of all time. and with all the short stories that have come out in the Insider, online, and in other sources in the past decade, they probably have enough for a hodgepodge anthology without having to start from scratch.
Double-yes WTF on the slavery/torture. A bunch of people are defending it as “the sith are supposed to be eeevil,” but any writer with a little creativity could have come up with dark side choices that didn’t involve turning slavery, torture, and violence against women into a punchline. I found that out and was like “yeah, never playing a Sith EVER.”
Sadly, there are many Epic Fails that playing Republic will not spare you from seeing (like all the dudes who are putting Leia’s slave outfit on their female companions. It’s “armor.” Seriously).
I’m having a heck of a lot of fun playing this game, but I’m also slapping my forehead a lot and going “Bioware, really? Did you really just–I mean really?”
As if we needed more proof that more female voices need to be heard in this fandom. :(
To be fair, though, the whole torturing people meme has recently skyrocketed all over the place. Personally I blame Drew Karpyshyn because his Bane novels were the most disgusting pieces of Sith/torture/evil adoration I had ever read (long since surpassed by the Revan novel, of course), but objectively you can easily trace it back to all the Bantam novels that slapped around Luke on a regular basis (Children of the Jedi, The New Rebellion, etc). And the NJO, obviously.
Making women/slave girls the target is just the rotten cherry on top of a mildewy cake.